Optimal districting with endogenous party platforms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bracco, Emanuele
• 署名单位: Lancaster University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.04.008
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1-13
• 关键词: Districting; Seat-vote curve; Social planner; Policy motivated parties; Office-motivated parties; voting; Legislative elections

摘要

Representation is one of the most important criteria by which to judge electoral systems. In this paper, I focus on one aspect of representative democracy: the formation of electoral district boundaries. It is well known that majoritarian systems give rise to highly biased seat-vote curves, causing representation to be less than ideal. What should, therefore, be the optimal constituency design when the objective is to maximize voters' welfare? I show that when parties take account of districting while setting platforms, then the district design problem reduces to a very simple rule: do nothing when voters are risk neutral, and - when voters are risk averse - choose a bias that is against the largest partisan group. Calibrating the model on data of the U.S. State legislative elections during the 1990s, I show that the welfare gain due to optimal districting is very small. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.